The Lost Relic

Chapter Forty-Three

The De Crescenzo residence, Rome

Ten to two in the morning and Count Pietro De Crescenzo was too tired to pace up and down any more, too tired to think, too tired to do anything except sit slumped in his armchair and stare dully across the large living room at his wife Ornella. She was lying with her back to him, her glossy blond curls fanned out over the arm of the sofa. The flimsy material of her dress had ridden up to mid-thigh and her legs were kicked out carelessly over the cushions. One white high-heeled shoe had fallen to the rug; the other was dangling from her toe, ready to drop at any moment like the last autumn leaf from a twig.

Once upon a time, Pietro De Crescenzo would have got up and gone over to her, brushed the hair from her face and straightened her dress for modesty’s sake, maybe covered her with a blanket, or else carried her tenderly to bed. But he didn’t move. Just sat there and listened to her soft snoring, watching the curve of her hip rise and fall as she slept.

Though, he reflected bitterly, ‘asleep’ wasn’t quite the right word for someone who’d spent the last almost three hours passed out in a comatose stupor. She’d hit the vodka particularly hard that night, and he had no sympathy for the selfish bitch. He was the one who should be drinking himself stupid all day, after what he’d been through. The tremors in his hands and knees were slowly fading, though there were moments when the horrors came flooding back and he was rendered virtually prostrate with nerves. The trauma was going to stay with him for the rest of his life – he was sure of it.

He looked at his watch and sighed. He dreaded going to bed. Night was the worst time. Night was when the ghosts came out to revisit him. Aldo Silvestri and Luigi Corsini, and the woman who had died in front of them all on the office floor, and all the other poor souls who had lost their lives. Their sightless eyes staring at him in the dark, their bloody fingers groping out to claw at him until he woke gasping and covered in sweat. Then he’d be awake till dawn, with only more horrors to look forward to – more agonised phone calls with Aldo’s and Luigi’s relatives, more terrible funerals to attend, more wrangling with obtuse insurance company directors and more hysterical gallery owners threatening dire litigation. It was a mess on a cataclysmic scale.

And meanwhile, the police investigation was drawing blanks every way it turned. Pietro had no faith in any of the detectives who’d been assigned to the case. Lario was a fool, and when he failed he’d simply be replaced with another fool. Though Pietro had to admit that he was having just as little success in solving the enigma that haunted him feverishly day and night.

Why the Goya? Why? Why? Its personal value to him, as a tangible connection to the woman he’d always wished could have been his own grandmother, was inestimable – but its monetary value was minimal compared to so many works that the robbers had just seemingly ignored. To walk past prizes that could have enriched them for the rest of their lives, for whose recovery the art world would have paid whatever gigantic ransom they demanded, in favour of a simple sketch that had spent most of the last century hidden away among the forgotten personal effects of a dead artist: no amount of obsessive brain-racking could help Pietro to see any sense in it.

Something else perplexed him even more deeply. This wasn’t the first time that Gabriella Giordani’s personal possessions had attracted the attentions of dangerous men.

He was worn out from trying to figure out the connection. His eyes were burning from fatigue and his neck and shoulders ached. He rose stiffly from his armchair, turned off the living room light and shut the door behind him.

Pietro’s office was across the other side of the large villa. When things weren’t going well between him and Ornella he often took refuge to sleep on the couch in there. They hadn’t argued, but he felt that way tonight.

As he walked into the office, he noticed the flashing light on his answer machine telling him there was a new message. It had been left after midnight.

Pietro let it play on speaker. The caller spoke Italian with a Spanish accent. His voice was deep and rich, like old wine.

‘Signor De Crescenzo, my name is Juan Calixto Segura. It is extremely important that I speak with you. Please call me immediately, night or day.’ A pause, then: ‘It concerns your stolen Goya.’

Pietro replayed the message with a trembling finger.

He hadn’t dreamed it.

Segura. The name was vaguely familiar. A wealthy art collector and dealer in Salamanca, De Crescenzo remembered – though they’d never met.

Frantic with anticipation, Pietro snatched up the phone handset and returned the Spaniard’s call. Segura picked up on the third ring. He didn’t sound as if he’d been asleep.

‘This is De Crescenzo.’

‘I thought you would call.’

‘My Goya,’ Pietro said breathlessly.

‘Charcoal on laid paper. “The Penitent Sinner”.’

‘That’s it. What have you to tell me?’

‘I think it better that we meet,’ Segura said. ‘I have something to show you.’

‘If you know something, I beg you . . .’ Pietro’s voice quavered; he was near to a sob as he spoke.

Segura was silent for a moment, as though unwilling to disclose too much on the phone. ‘I will tell you this much,’ he said. ‘How can it be that “The Penitent Sinner” was stolen from your gallery in Italy?’

Pietro was stunned. ‘What do you mean? It was stolen.’

‘Then you may care to explain to me,’ Segura said, ‘why it is sitting here safely in my private collection, where it has been for many years.’